Posted on 06/23/2014 10:08:28 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Islamist rebel groups in Syria are recruiting children as young as 14 years, under the guise of offering them education, in their battle against the forces of the government of President Bashar Al Assad, a Human Rights Watch report said Monday.
The rights group released its 31-page report "'Maybe We Live and Maybe We Die': Recruitment and Use of Children by Armed Groups in Syria", documenting the experience of 25 children and former child soldiers in Syria's armed conflict. "The groups have used children as young as 14 in support roles. Extremist Islamist groups including the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) have specifically recruited children through free schooling campaigns that include weapons training, and have given them dangerous tasks, including suicide bombing missions," the Human Rights Watch report said.
It said that the children interviewed had fought in battles, acted as snipers, manned checkpoints, spied on hostile forces, treated the wounded on battlefields, and ferried ammunition and other supplies to front lines while fighting raged.
The report has been compiled after interviewing children "who fought with the Free Syrian Army, the Islamic Front coalition, and the extremist groups ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, an Al Qaeda affiliate, as well as the military and police forces in Kurdish-controlled areas".
The report said that the number of children fighting with armed groups in Syria was not known. But the Violations Documenting Center, a Syrian monitoring group, had documented 194 deaths of "non-civilian" male children in Syria since September 2011.
"The horrors of Syria's armed conflict are only made worse by throwing children into the front lines," said Priyanka Motaparthy, the author of the report.
The rights group in the report urged donors to "suspend all military sales and assistance, including technical training and services, to all forces credibly implicated in widespread or systematic serious abuses, including using child soldiers".
"Aid should be restored only if groups end the abuses and take appropriate disciplinary action against anyone involved." The report also demanded the discharge of all soldiers under the age of 18 and warned anyone backing such organizations of being potentially complicit in war crimes.
I wonder if this is why Barry and the ‘RATS are sending all of their “Kiddie Krusaders” to military bases. Could this be the beginning of the civilian army Barry told us he wanted to build? Hmmmm.
If Obama had a son...
I thought it meant Children’s group founded pro gun group to protect their villages against McCain’s buddies.
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